Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We still have time to mess this up!

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it’s a trap.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Bark louder, little dog.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

“woke” is the new caravan.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

The lights are all blinking red.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / Friday Respite Open Thread: “In Search Of A Hot Pink Bitch Named Breakfast”

Friday Respite Open Thread: “In Search Of A Hot Pink Bitch Named Breakfast”

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Before y’all get judgey, I once dyed my first dog glitter blue for his doggy obedience-class Halloween party. He didn’t find the dye (which washed out right afterward) nearly as annoying as the strap-on butterfly wings and the light-up deelybobbers… he was a Papillon! (And a bodhisattva, but that’s a longer story.)

“This hot pink bitch was named breakfast!!!” is a string of words and punctuation that’s just barely coherent enough to communicate its subject matter (a magenta dog that is named after a meal) and just crazed enough to inspire intense devotion. The sentence was written, possibly for the first time in history, in a March 22, 2018, post to “Dogspotting” by Katie Dawson along with a blurry snap of a roseate Pomeranian.

In Dogspotting, the 1.8 million-member Facebook group, people post pictures of dogs they’ve spotted and assign them semi-arbitrary point value. It was a mid-2010s internet triumph: one of those rare low-stakes, positivity-only outposts on an increasingly sour and combative internet…

But Breakfast is, at least by the standards of viral animals, underexposed. Unique among internet-famous pets, Breakfast has no curated online presence, no brand deals, no intention to be anything other than a hot pink bitch. Breakfast presumably doesn’t even know they are hot pink, as dogs are colorblind and pink is not a color they see.

A few weeks ago, after I saw a periodic repost of the photo, I realized that the photo was four years old, and that’s about 30 percent of a Pomeranian’s lifespan, which made me sick with fear that Breakfast might have died. I’d lose my breakfast if I lost my Breakfast!

So I cracked my knuckles, opened a new tab, and started my quest for Breakfast. First, I tracked down Katie, Breakfast’s original spotter who now lives in Arlington, Va., and works in partnerships at a philanthropy organization. The Dogspotting Facebook group has an ironclad rule against posting dogs you know, so it was unlikely that Katie and Breakfast had a long-established relationship, but I hoped that maybe she had stayed in touch with the dog’s owners. I mean, they’d presumably struck up a conversation when they told her Breakfast’s name. I pestered Katie with a few messages and eventually she replied to say that she did not know Breakfast’s whereabouts. “Pretty wild that I still get people reaching out about this when I took that picture close to five years ago,” she added, making it clear that she’d moved on. I, unfortunately, had not…

We asked each other, “If you were a hot pink bitch named Breakfast, where would you be?” The answer, instantly obvious, is Instagram. Reed and I looked through the hashtags #breakfastdog and #breakfastthedog, which turned out to be mostly galleries of egg-topped hot dogs or dogs eating bacon, until we found one blurry shot of a Pomeranian by a couch. A bit of sleuthing revealed that Breakfast’s owners had been in an NYC-based punk band—making them the exact type of people you’d expect to dye a dog hot pink, I suppose. Soon enough, I was on the phone with them.

“We got him in 2012 and first dyed him pink in 2013,” Sofia, 33, told me while she was making dinner for her human toddler. In this moment, I realized that Breakfast was a he—a hot pink bro, as it turns out…


Friday Respite Open Thread: "In Search Of A Hot Pink Bitch Named Breakfast"

Dude living his best life!

… In 2012, Sofia and Johnny, now 43, had been partying at a house with a Pomeranian and impulsively decided to buy their own the next day. They followed a Craigslist lead to East New York where they met a teenager who described her unstable living environment and desperation to rehome the dog. “She told us that Breakfast was born at a Wendy’s,” Johnny said. They took him home and changed his name from Coco to Breakfast, which Johnny had been saving for years: “He’s just a very important man who goes with a very important meal,” he explained. (Despite the sentiment, Johnny does not regularly eat breakfast.) Eventually, though, they came around on the name Coco. “Ironically,” Johnny told me, “that’s what we ended up naming our daughter.”

The young Breakfast was so malnourished he could only walk for 20 feet at a time. “His legs were tiny macaronis,” Johnny remembered. But after a healthy diet and regular exercise, he got stronger, and after a few months, they decided to dye him pink.

Why, I asked, which felt to me like an obvious question. To which Johnny asked a question of his own: “Where does anyone get their ideas?” Fair enough. “It’s punk rock, fuck it!” he added…

Rescue pets, truly the best. More details & (not enough) photos at the link. Stay fabulous, Breakfast!

Reader Interactions

50Comments

  3. 3.

    CarolPW

    After the Pulse shooting my sister and I went to a memorial for those killed and injured. I did a LGBTQ flag sequence of scrunchies in my hair, she did the same but with neck scarves and we dyed her westie’s head (with food coloring) in rainbow stripes. He looked fabulous. We looked sad.

  6. 6.

    Anne Laurie

    @Old School: Breakfast is male.

    But he’s a Pomeranian, so probably a little bitch, as well.

    (One of the Poms I knew best figured out how to pick the pockets of people sitting on his person’s couch.  He loved parading away with a kleenex or a tube of lip gloss, grinning… )

  8. 8.

    UncleEbeneezer

    “He didn’t find the dye (which washed out right afterward) nearly as annoying as the strap-on”

    Ma’am, this is supposed to be a family-friendly blog 🤣

  12. 12.

    CaseyL

    If you go to the story, it includes a link to the dye product they bought on Amazon. I read some of the Amazon reviews. One woman dyed her cat, and her review is wonderful:

    Obviously, dyeing a cat is going to be one of the most difficult things you do in your lifetime, but after a while of wrestling her into submission and pissed off cat screams, this is the final product! I just wanted to get her belly and the back two paws, and I feel like it turned out well for what I was able to leave on her fur. The color is really pretty, and I was afraid it would rub off on things or stain my white blankets blue, but it hasn’t bled at all so I’m happy!
    I made the mistake of not realizing that it would stain me blue from head to toe, but I feel like that was a rookie mistake. Just make sure you wear gloves unless you want to be turned into a smurf :)

  14. 14.

    Gin & Tonic

    It was clear but downright cool today here in southern New England, so I drove down to a (fairly) nearby brewery with the top down but the heat on, thinking on the way home that it will very soon be time to store the convertible for the winter. Foliage is past its peak, with largely just the oaks still holding on – but in the last week they’ve pretty much all browned up.

  18. 18.

    Martin

    I broke into my advisors office and dyed his white rabbit blue as a prank in college.

    He was kind of pissed about that. Bunny was cute though. Blue food coloring in a spray bottle. Easy-peasy.

  27. 27.

    CaseyL

    @Ken:  The cat always wins.  In fact, “the cat always wins” should be a rotating tag.

    @Martin: I didn’t get that reference, so I looked it up, and all I can say is: I have relatives like that.

  30. 30.

    Alison Rose

    @Origuy: I did! I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if some people do actually dress up as him. Get yourself some sparkly clothes, pink glasses (which he sells on his website), a boa, something rainbow…you’re all set.

  34. 34.

    SpaceUnit

    I am going to assume that anyone who goes online and encourages people to dye their cat is a marketing exec for Bactine.

  41. 41.

    realbtl

    @Gin & Tonic: ​  What is this put the convertible away for the winter. I just got my Mustang’s oil etc changed, have my good studless snow tires on and 2 bags of sand for weight in the trunk. Nothing like clear blue skies in 10º sun.​

  45. 45.

    Gin & Tonic

    @realbtl: Different strokes. I don’t like the idea of driving it in the salt and sand, and I’d need four new tires, because the ones I have suck in the cold.

  50. 50.

    StringOnAStick

    I have a friend with the sweetest Pomeranian, I love that sweet little dog.  She got her from the stripper in a bar she was a bartender in while in college.  When I told my husband that my co-worker had gotten through dental hygiene school by bartending in a strip club, he said he liked her even more.  Seriously, dentistry is a conservative profession, and she’s the best hygienist I’ve ever known though she keeps that story on the DL.

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